Look round thee, young
Astolpho: Here’s the place
Which men (for being poor) are sent to
starve in;
Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease.
Within these walls, stifled by damp and
stench,
Doth Hope’s fair torch expire; and
at the snuff,
Ere yet ’tis quite extinct, rude,
wild, and way-ward,
The desperate revelries of wild despair,
Kindling their hell-born cressets, light
to deeds
That the poor captive would have died
ere practised,
Till bondage sunk his soul to his
condition.
The Prison, Scene
III. Act I.

At my first entrance I turned an eager
glance towards my conductor; but the lamp in the vestibule
was too low in flame to give my curiosity any satisfaction
by affording a distinct perusal of his features.
As the turnkey held the light in his hand, the beams
fell more full on his own scarce less interesting
figure. He was a wild shock-headed looking animal,
whose profusion of red hair covered and obscured his
features, which were otherwise only characterised
by the extravagant joy that affected him at the sight
of my guide. In my experience I have met nothing
so absolutely resembling my idea of a very uncouth,
wild, and ugly savage, adoring the idol of his tribe.
He grinned, he shivered, he laughed, he was near crying,
if he did not actually cry. He had a “Where
shall I go? ­What can I do for you?”
expression of face; the complete, surrendered, and
anxious subservience and devotion of which it is difficult
to describe, otherwise than by the awkward combination
which I have attempted. The fellow’s voice
seemed choking in his ecstasy, and only could express
itself in such interjections as “Oigh! oigh! ­Ay!
ay! ­it’s lang since she’s
seen ye!” and other exclamations equally brief,
expressed in the same unknown tongue in which he had
communicated with my conductor while we were on the
outside of the jail door. My guide received all
this excess of joyful gratulation much like a prince
too early accustomed to the homage of those around
him to be much moved by it, yet willing to requite
it by the usual forms of royal courtesy. He extended
his hand graciously towards the turnkey, with a civil
inquiry of “How’s a’ wi’ you,
Dougal?”

“Oigh! oigh!” exclaimed
Dougal, softening the sharp exclamations of his surprise
as he looked around with an eye of watchful alarm ­“Oigh!
to see you here ­to see you here! ­Oigh! ­what
will come o’ ye gin the bailies suld come to
get witting ­ta filthy, gutty hallions,
tat they are?”

My guide placed his finger on his
lip, and said, “Fear nothing, Dougal; your hands
shall never draw a bolt on me.”

“Tat sall they no,” said
Dougal; “she suld ­she wad ­that
is, she wishes them hacked aff by the elbows first ­But
when are ye gaun yonder again? and ye’ll no
forget to let her ken ­she’s your puir
cousin, God kens, only seven times removed.”

“I will let you ken, Dougal,
as soon as my plans are settled.”

“And, by her sooth, when you
do, an it were twal o’ the Sunday at e’en,
she’ll fling her keys at the provost’s
head or she gie them anither turn, and that or ever
Monday morning begins ­see if she winna.”

My mysterious stranger cut his acquaintance’s
ecstasies short by again addressing him, in what I
afterwards understood to be the Irish, Earse, or Gaelic,
explaining, probably, the services which he required
at his hand. The answer, “Wi’ a’
her heart ­wi’ a’ her soul,”
with a good deal of indistinct muttering in a similar
tone, intimated the turnkey’s acquiescence in
what he proposed. The fellow trimmed his dying
lamp, and made a sign to me to follow him.

“Do you not go with us?” said I, looking
to my conductor.

“It is unnecessary,” he
replied; “my company may be inconvenient for
you, and I had better remain to secure our retreat.”

“I do not suppose you mean to
betray me to danger,” said I.

“To none but what I partake
in doubly,” answered the stranger, with a voice
of assurance which it was impossible to mistrust.

I followed the turnkey, who, leaving
the inner wicket unlocked behind him, led me up a
turnpike (so the Scotch call a winding stair),
then along a narrow gallery ­then opening
one of several doors which led into the passage, he
ushered me into a small apartment, and casting his
eye on the pallet-bed which occupied one corner, said
with an under voice, as he placed the lamp on a little
deal table, “She’s sleeping.”

“She! ­who? ­can
it be Diana Vernon in this abode of misery?”

I turned my eye to the bed, and it
was with a mixture of disappointment oddly mingled
with pleasure, that I saw my first suspicion had deceived
me. I saw a head neither young nor beautiful,
garnished with a grey beard of two days’ growth,
and accommodated with a red nightcap. The first
glance put me at ease on the score of Diana Vernon;
the second, as the slumberer awoke from a heavy sleep,
yawned, and rubbed his eyes, presented me with features
very different indeed ­even those of my poor
friend Owen. I drew back out of view an instant,
that he might have time to recover himself; fortunately
recollecting that I was but an intruder on these cells
of sorrow, and that any alarm might be attended with
unhappy consequences.

Meantime, the unfortunate formalist,
raising himself from the pallet-bed with the assistance
of one hand, and scratching his cap with the other,
exclaimed in a voice in which as much peevishness as
he was capable of feeling, contended with drowsiness,
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Dug-well, or
whatever your name may be, the sum-total of the matter
is, that if my natural rest is to be broken in this
manner, I must complain to the lord mayor.”

“Shentlemans to speak wi’
her,” replied Dougal, resuming the true dogged
sullen tone of a turnkey, in exchange for the shrill
clang of Highland congratulation with which he had
welcomed my mysterious guide; and, turning on his
heel, he left the apartment.

It was some time before I could prevail
upon the unfortunate sleeper awakening to recognise
me; and when he did so, the distress of the worthy
creature was extreme, at supposing, which he naturally
did, that I had been sent thither as a partner of
his captivity.

“O, Mr. Frank, what have you
brought yourself and the house to? ­I think
nothing of myself, that am a mere cipher, so to speak;
but you, that was your father’s sum-total ­his
omnium, ­you that might have been the
first man in the first house in the first city, to
be shut up in a nasty Scotch jail, where one cannot
even get the dirt brushed off their clothes!”

He rubbed, with an air of peevish
irritation, the once stainless brown coat, which had
now shared some of the impurities of the floor of his
prison-house, ­his habits of extreme punctilious
neatness acting mechanically to increase his distress. ­“O
Heaven be gracious to us!” he continued.
“What news this will be on ’Change!
There has not the like come there since the battle
of Almanza, where the total of the British loss was
summed up to five thousand men killed and wounded,
besides a floating balance of missing ­but
what will that be to the news that Osbaldistone and
Tresham have stopped!”

I broke in on his lamentations to
acquaint him that I was no prisoner, though scarce
able to account for my being in that place at such
an hour. I could only silence his inquiries by
persisting in those which his own situation suggested;
and at length obtained from him such information as
he was able to give me. It was none of the most
distinct; for, however clear-headed in his own routine
of commercial business, Owen, you are well aware,
was not very acute in comprehending what lay beyond
that sphere.

The sum of his information was, that
of two correspondents of my father’s firm at
Glasgow, where, owing to engagements in Scotland formerly
alluded to, he transacted a great deal of business,
both my father and Owen had found the house of MacVittie,
MacFin, and Company, the most obliging and accommodating.
They had deferred to the great English house on every
possible occasion; and in their bargains and transactions
acted, without repining, the part of the jackall,
who only claims what the lion is pleased to leave
him. However small the share of profit allotted
to them, it was always, as they expressed it, “enough
for the like of them;” however large the portion
of trouble, “they were sensible they could not
do too much to deserve the continued patronage and
good opinion of their honoured friends in Crane Alley.”

The dictates of my father were to
MacVittie and MacFin the laws of the Mèdes and
Persians, not to be altered, innovated, or even discussed;
and the punctilios exacted by Owen in their business
transactions, for he was a great lover of form, more
especially when he could dictate it ex cathedra,
seemed scarce less sanctimonious in their eyes.
This tone of deep and respectful observance went all
currently down with Owen; but my father looked a little
closer into men’s bosoms, and whether suspicious
of this excess of deference, or, as a lover of brevity
and simplicity in business, tired with these gentlemen’s
long-winded professions of regard, he had uniformly
resisted their desire to become his sole agents in
Scotland. On the contrary, he transacted many
affairs through a correspondent of a character perfectly
different ­a man whose good opinion of himself
amounted to self-conceit, and who, disliking the English
in general as much as my father did the Scotch, would
hold no communication but on a footing of absolute
equality; jealous, moreover; captious occasionally;
as tenacious of his own opinions in point of form
as Owen could be of his; and totally indifferent though
the authority of all Lombard Street had stood against
his own private opinion.

As these peculiarities of temper rendered
it difficult to transact business with Mr. Nicol Jarvie, ­as
they occasioned at times disputes and coldness between
the English house and their correspondent, which were
only got over by a sense of mutual interest, ­as,
moreover, Owen’s personal vanity sometimes suffered
a little in the discussions to which they gave rise,
you cannot be surprised, Tresham, that our old friend
threw at all times the weight of his influence in favour
of the civil, discreet, accommodating concern of MacVittie
and MacFin, and spoke of Jarvie as a petulant, conceited
Scotch pedlar, with whom there was no dealing.

It was also not surprising, that in
these circumstances, which I only learned in detail
some time afterwards, Owen, in the difficulties to
which the house was reduced by the absence of my father,
and the disappearance of Rashleigh, should, on his
arrival in Scotland, which took place two days before
mine, have recourse to the friendship of those correspondents,
who had always professed themselves obliged, gratified,
and devoted to the service of his principal. He
was received at Messrs. MacVittie and MacFin’s
counting-house in the Gallowgate, with something like
the devotion a Catholic would pay to his tutelar saint.
But, alas! this sunshine was soon overclouded, when,
encouraged by the fair hopes which it inspired, he
opened the difficulties of the house to his friendly
correspondents, and requested their counsel and assistance.
MacVittie was almost stunned by the communication;
and MacFin, ere it was completed, was already at the
ledger of their firm, and deeply engaged in the very
bowels of the multitudinous accounts between their
house and that of Osbaldistone and Tresham, for the
purpose of discovering on which side the balance lay.
Alas! the scale depressed considerably against the
English firm; and the faces of MacVittie and MacFin,
hitherto only blank and doubtful, became now ominous,
grim, and lowering. They met Mr. Owen’s
request of countenance and assistance with a counter-demand
of instant security against imminent hazard of eventual
loss; and at length, speaking more plainly, required
that a deposit of assets, destined for other purposes,
should be placed in their hands for that purpose.
Owen repelled this demand with great indignation,
as dishonourable to his constituents, unjust to the
other creditors of Osbaldistone and Tresham, and very
ungrateful on the part of those by whom it was made.

The Scotch partners gained, in the
course of this controversy, what is very convenient
to persons who are in the wrong, an opportunity and
pretext for putting themselves in a violent passion,
and for taking, under the pretext of the provocation
they had received, measures to which some sense of
decency, if not of conscience, might otherwise have
deterred them from resorting.

Owen had a small share, as I believe
is usual, in the house to which he acted as head-clerk,
and was therefore personally liable for all its obligations.
This was known to Messrs. MacVittie and MacFin; and,
with a view of making him feel their power, or rather
in order to force him, at this emergency, into those
measures in their favour, to which he had expressed
himself so repugnant, they had recourse to a summary
process of arrest and imprisonment, ­which
it seems the law of Scotland (therein surely liable
to much abuse) allows to a creditor, who finds his
conscience at liberty to make oath that the debtor
meditates departing from the realm. Under such
a warrant had poor Owen been confined to durance on
the day preceding that when I was so strangely guided
to his prison-house.

Thus possessed of the alarming outline
of facts, the question remained, what was to be done
and it was not of easy determination. I plainly
perceived the perils with which we were surrounded,
but it was more difficult to suggest any remedy.
The warning which I had already received seemed to
intimate, that my own personal liberty might be endangered
by an open appearance in Owen’s behalf.
Owen entertained the same apprehension, and, in the
exaggeration of his terror, assured me that a Scotchman,
rather than run the risk of losing a farthing by an
Englishman, would find law for arresting his wife,
children, man-servant, maidservant, and stranger within
his household. The laws concerning debt, in most
countries, are so unmercifully severe, that I could
not altogether disbelieve his statement; and my arrest,
in the present circumstances, would have been a coup-de-grace
to my father’s affairs. In this dilemma,
I asked Owen if he had not thought of having recourse
to my father’s other correspondent in Glasgow,
Mr. Nicol Jarvie?

“He had sent him a letter,”
he replied, “that morning; but if the smooth-tongued
and civil house in the Gallowgate had used him thus,
what was to be expected from the cross-grained crab-stock
in the Salt-Market?

[A street in the old town of Glasgow.]

You might as well ask a broker to
give up his percentage, as expect a favour from him
without the per contra. He had not even,”
Owen said, “answered his letter though it was
put into his hand that morning as he went to church.”
And here the despairing man-of-figures threw himself
down on his pallet, exclaiming, ­“My
poor dear master! My poor dear master! O
Mr. Frank, Mr. Frank, this is all your obstinacy! ­But
God forgive me for saying so to you in your distress!
It’s God’s disposing, and man must submit.”

My philosophy, Tresham, could not
prevent my sharing in the honest creature’s
distress, and we mingled our tears, ­the
more bitter on my part, as the perverse opposition
to my father’s will, with which the kind-hearted
Owen forbore to upbraid me, rose up to my conscience
as the cause of all this affliction.

In the midst of our mingled sorrow,
we were disturbed and surprised by a loud knocking
at the outward door of the prison. I ran to the
top of the staircase to listen, but could only hear
the voice of the turnkey, alternately in a high tone,
answering to some person without, and in a whisper,
addressed to the person who had guided me hither ­“She’s
coming ­she’s coming,” aloud;
then in a low key, “O hon-a-ri! O hon-a-ri!
what’ll she do now? ­Gang up ta
stair, and hide yourself ahint ta Sassenach shentleman’s
ped. ­She’s coming as fast as she can. ­Ahellanay!
it’s my lord provosts, and ta pailies, and
ta guard ­and ta captain’s
coming toon stairs too ­Got press her! gang
up or he meets her. ­She’s coming ­she’s
coming ­ta lock’s sair roosted.”

While Dougal, unwillingly, and with
as much delay as possible, undid the various fastenings
to give admittance to those without, whose impatience
became clamorous, my guide ascended the winding stair,
and sprang into Owen’s apartment, into which
I followed him. He cast his eyes hastily round,
as if looking for a place of concealment; then said
to me, “Lend me your pistols ­yet
it’s no matter, I can do without them ­Whatever
you see, take no heed, and do not mix your hand in
another man’s feud ­This gear’s
mine, and I must manage it as I dow; but I have been
as hard bested, and worse, than I am even now.”

As the stranger spoke these words,
he stripped from his person the cumbrous upper coat
in which he was wrapt, confronted the door of the
apartment, on which he fixed a keen and determined
glance, drawing his person a little back to concentrate
his force, like a fine horse brought up to the leaping-bar.
I had not a moment’s doubt that he meant to
extricate himself from his embarrassment, whatever
might be the cause of it, by springing full upon those
who should appear when the doors opened, and forcing
his way through all opposition into the street; ­and
such was the appearance of strength and agility displayed
in his frame, and of determination in his look and
manner, that I did not doubt a moment but that he
might get clear through his opponents, unless they
employed fatal means to stop his purpose. It
was a period of awful suspense betwixt the opening
of the outward gate and that of the door of the apartment,
when there appeared ­no guard with bayonets
fixed, or watch with clubs, bills, or partisans, but
a good-looking young woman, with grogram petticoats,
tucked up for trudging through the streets, and holding
a lantern in her hand. This female ushered in
a more important personage, in form, stout, short,
and somewhat corpulent; and by dignity, as it soon
appeared, a magistrate, bob-wigged, bustling, and
breathless with peevish impatience. My conductor,
at his appearance, drew back as if to escape observation;
but he could not elude the penetrating twinkle with
which this dignitary reconnoitered the whole apartment.

“A bonny thing it is, and a
beseeming, that I should be kept at the door half
an hour, Captain Stanchells,” said he, addressing
the principal jailor, who now showed himself at the
door as if in attendance on the great man, “knocking
as hard to get into the tolbooth as onybody else wad
to get out of it, could that avail them, poor fallen
creatures! ­And how’s this? ­how’s
this? ­strangers in the jail after lock-up
hours, and on the Sabbath evening! ­I shall
look after this, Stanchells, you may depend on’t ­Keep
the door locked, and I’ll speak to these gentlemen
in a gliffing ­But first I maun hae a crack
wi’ an auld acquaintance here. ­ Mr.
Owen, Mr. Owen, how’s a’ wi’ ye,
man?”

“Nae doubt, nae doubt ­ay,
ay ­it’s an awfu’ whummle ­and
for ane that held his head sae high too ­human
nature, human nature ­Ay ay, we’re
a’ subject to a downcome. Mr. Osbaldistone
is a gude honest gentleman; but I aye said he was
ane o’ them wad make a spune or spoil a horn,
as my father the worthy deacon used to say. The
deacon used to say to me, ‘Nick ­young
Nick’ (his name was Nicol as weel as mine; sae
folk ca’d us in their daffin’, young Nick
and auld Nick) ­’Nick,’ said
he, ’never put out your arm farther than ye
can draw it easily back again.’ I hae said
sae to Mr. Osbaldistone, and he didna seem to take
it a’thegither sae kind as I wished ­but
it was weel meant ­weel meant.”

This discourse, delivered with prodigious
volubility, and a great appearance of self-complacency,
as he recollected his own advice and predictions,
gave little promise of assistance at the hands of Mr.
Jarvie. Yet it soon appeared rather to proceed
from a total want of delicacy than any deficiency
of real kindness; for when Owen expressed himself
somewhat hurt that these things should be recalled
to memory in his present situation, the Glaswegian
took him by the hand, and bade him “Cheer up
a gliff! D’ye think I wad hae comed out
at twal o’clock at night, and amaist broken
the Lord’s day, just to tell a fa’en man
o’ his backslidings? Na, na,
that’s no Bailie Jarvie’s gate, nor was’t
his worthy father’s the deacon afore him.
Why, man! it’s my rule never to think on warldly
business on the Sabbath, and though I did a’
I could to keep your note that I gat this morning
out o’ my head, yet I thought mair on it a’
day, than on the preaching ­And it’s
my rule to gang to my bed wi’ the yellow curtains
preceesely at ten o’clock ­unless I
were eating a haddock wi’ a neighbour, or a
neighbour wi’ me ­ask the lass-quean
there, if it isna a fundamental rule in my household;
and here hae I sitten up reading gude books, and gaping
as if I wad swallow St. Enox Kirk, till it chappit
twal, whilk was a lawfu’ hour to gie a look at
my ledger, just to see how things stood between us;
and then, as time and tide wait for no man, I made
the lass get the lantern, and came slipping my ways
here to see what can be dune anent your affairs.
Bailie Jarvie can command entrance into the tolbooth
at ony hour, day or night; ­sae could my
father the deacon in his time, honest man, praise to
his memory.”

Although Owen groaned at the mention
of the ledger, leading me grievously to fear that
here also the balance stood in the wrong column; and
although the worthy magistrate’s speech expressed
much self-complacency, and some ominous triumph in
his own superior judgment, yet it was blended with
a sort of frank and blunt good-nature, from which I
could not help deriving some hopes. He requested
to see some papers he mentioned, snatched them hastily
from Owen’s hand, and sitting on the bed, to
“rest his shanks,” as he was pleased to
express the accommodation which that posture afforded
him, his servant girl held up the lantern to him, while,
pshawing, muttering, and sputtering, now at the imperfect
light, now at the contents of the packet, he ran over
the writings it contained.

Seeing him fairly engaged in this
course of study, the guide who had brought me hither
seemed disposed to take an unceremonious leave.
He made a sign to me to say nothing, and intimated,
by his change of posture, an intention to glide towards
the door in such a manner as to attract the least
possible observation. But the alert magistrate
(very different from my old acquaintance, Mr. Justice
Inglewood) instantly detected and interrupted his
purposes. “I say, look to the door, Stanchells ­shut
and lock it, and keep watch on the outside.”

The stranger’s brow darkened,
and he seemed for an instant again to meditate the
effecting his retreat by violence; but ere he had
determined, the door closed, and the ponderous bolt
revolved. He muttered an exclamation in Gaelic,
strode across the floor, and then, with an air of
dogged resolution, as if fixed and prepared to see
the scene to an end, sate himself down on the oak
table, and whistled a strathspey.

Mr. Jarvie, who seemed very alert
and expeditious in going through business, soon showed
himself master of that which he had been considering,
and addressed himself to Mr. Owen in the following
strain: ­ “Weel, Mr. Owen, weel ­your
house are awin’ certain sums to Messrs. MacVittie
and MacFin (shame fa’ their souple
snouts! they made that and mair out o’ a bargain
about the aik-woods at Glen-Cailziechat, that they
took out atween my teeth ­wi’ help
o’ your gude word, I maun needs say, Mr. Owen ­but
that makes nae odds now) ­Weel, sir, your
house awes them this siller; and for this, and relief
of other engagements they stand in for you, they hae
putten a double turn o’ Stanchells’ muckle
key on ye. ­ Weel, sir, ye awe this siller ­and
maybe ye awe some mair to some other body too ­maybe
ye awe some to myself, Bailie Nicol Jarvie.”

“I cannot deny, sir, but the
balance may of this date be brought out against us,
Mr. Jarvie,” said Owen; “but you’ll
please to consider” ­

“I hae nae time to consider
e’enow, Mr. Owen ­Sae near Sabbath
at e’en, and out o’ âne’s warm
bed at this time o’ night, and a sort o’
drow in the air besides ­there’s nae
time for considering ­But, sir, as I was
saying, ye awe me money ­it winna deny ­ye
awe me money, less or mair, I’ll stand by it.
But then, Mr. Owen, I canna see how you, an active
man that understands business, can redd out the business
ye’re come down about, and clear us a’
aff ­as I have gritt hope ye will ­if
ye’re keepit lying here in the tolbooth of Glasgow.
Now, sir, if you can find caution judicio sisti, ­that
is, that ye winna flee the country, but appear and
relieve your caution when ca’d for in our legal
courts, ye may be set at liberty this very morning.”

“Mr. Jarvie,” said Owen,
“if any friend would become surety for me to
that effect, my liberty might be usefully employed,
doubtless, both for the house and all connected with
it.”

“Aweel, sir,” continued
Jarvie, “and doubtless such a friend wad expect
ye to appear when ca’d on, and relieve him o’
his engagement.”

“And I should do so as certainly,
bating sickness or death, as that two and two make
four.”

“Aweel, Mr. Owen,” resumed
the citizen of Glasgow, “I dinna misdoubt ye,
and I’ll prove it, sir ­I’ll
prove it. I am a carefu’ man, as is weel
ken’d, and industrious, as the hale town can
testify; and I can win my crowns, and keep my crowns,
and count my crowns, wi’ onybody in the Saut
Market, or it may be in the Gallowgate. And I’m
a prudent man, as my father the deacon was before
me; ­but rather than an honest civil gentleman,
that understands business, and is willing to do justice
to all men, should lie by the heels this gate, unable
to help himsell or onybody else ­why, conscience,
man! I’ll be your bail myself ­But
ye’ll mind it’s a bail judicio sisti,
as our town-clerk says, not judicatum solvi;
ye’ll mind that, for there’s muckle difference.”

Mr. Owen assured him, that as matters
then stood, he could not expect any one to become
surety for the actual payment of the debt, but that
there was not the most distant cause for apprehending
loss from his failing to present himself when lawfully
called upon.

“I believe ye ­I believe
ye. Eneugh said ­eneugh said. We’se
hae your legs loose by breakfast-time. ­And
now let’s hear what thir chamber chiels o’
yours hae to say for themselves, or how, in the name
of unrule, they got here at this time o’ night.”

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